Much too brief encounter with some very likable characters.
Writer confronts middle-aged angst while studying happiness, in a third by Grunwald (New Year’s Eve, 1997, etc.).
Sally Farber leads an enviable Manhattan life of letters. The mother of two well-behaved preteen daughters, she’s contentedly married to childhood sweetheart Michael, an earnest, dedicated doctor. But she’s blocked on The History of Happiness, the fourth in her series of concept books. Her writing-avoidance research into various felicity formulas derived from advertising, philosophy, laughter therapy, pop-psyche, Smiley Faces and Bobby McFerrin (mercifully sans singing fish) provides the struts for the slight plot of this engaging story. Sally is not always impervious to undermining by her needy, overprivileged girlfriend, T.J., an editor whose own maxim for bliss is: “I just had to do something for myself.” When Sally’s childhood apartment overlooking Central Park West is vacated by the death of a tenant, her elderly mother enlists her to prepare it for sale. Soon, her daughters head off to camp for two months, and Sally weathers her first experience with empty-nest syndrome. At the wedding of T.J.’s sister, Sally exchanges erotic sparks with lusty-for-life painter Lucas Ross. She takes Lucas up on his innuendos, and Mom’s apartment becomes the ideal trysting spot. Lucas increases property values by covering the bedroom’s floor and wall with his signature didactic friezes. The lovers share superior sex (and chocolate) and somehow miss colliding with T.J., who also has a key. But T.J. does succeed in enlisting Marathon Ross, Lucas’s X-ray wife, as a decorating consultant for the apartment, which leads to the premature and disappointing end. Grunwald’s prose is smooth, the dialogue between Sally and Lucas is deliciously trenchant. By contrast, Sally’s conversations with Michael are flat and opaque, belying her professed depth of feeling for him. Although not always relevant to the action, the segments on happiness are satisfying in an Alain de Botton sort of way. Book clubs will welcome the talking points.
Much too brief encounter with some very likable characters.Pub Date: June 7, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6299-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
